Video: Using the Glyphs panel

In the previous movie, I spoke about two different kinds of OpenType fonts, something called OpenType Standard fonts and something called OpenType Pro Fonts. Now again, these are the names that Adobe gives them, but other manufacturers may create, again, two different types of OpenType fonts: those that have basic features or what we call basic character sets, and then we have some fonts that have extended character sets or more features inside of them. To better understand that, let's compare actually some of these different types of fonts, and to do that, we are going to use a feature inside of Illustrator called Glyphs panel.

In this installment of Illustrator Insider Training, author Mordy Golding shows how to create type that’s both beautiful and communicative, whether it’s destined for logos, brochures, signs, infographics, or simple documents. This course covers core typography concepts, such as working with Unicode and OpenType fonts, applying character and paragraph settings, managing text with styles and text threads, placing text along a path, and wrapping text around graphics.

Using the Glyphs panel

In the previous movie, I spoke about two different kinds of OpenType fonts,something called OpenType Standard fonts and something called OpenType Pro Fonts.Now again, these are the names that Adobe gives them, but other manufacturersmay create, again, two different types of OpenType fonts:those that have basic features or what we call basic character sets, and thenwe have some fonts that have extended character sets or more features inside of them.To better understand that, let's compare actually some of these different typesof fonts, and to do that, we are going to use a feature inside of Illustratorcalled Glyphs panel.

You can find that by going to the Type menu and choosing Glyphs.Now, before we actually talk about the Glyphs panel, let's get a betterunderstanding of what a glyph is.Now we throw around these terms like characters, for example.Like a character might be an uppercase a or a lowercase a. A glyph is a picture.It's a picture that describes a character, but it might also describe more thanjust a single character.For example, in the world of typography, we have a concept called a ligature.

What is a ligature?Well, when I have two letters that appear next to each other, for example, anF and lowercase I, because the lowercase F kind of bends towards the frontover here to the next character and because the lowercase I usually haslittle dot on top of it,those two parts of the characters may kind of run into each other.So you may have the F collide with a lowercase I, and that might look bad.So what a type designer will do is design a brand-new character which replacesa single F and a single I. So whenever you have a lowercase F and a lowercase Ithat appear next to each other--for example, if you typing the word finish, so you might have F and I--a specialpicture or special glyph is created that has two characters inside of it. It's one picture.

It's an F and an I combined into one unit, but inside of that one picture, weare referencing two separate characters.So to better describe these terms that we are using here, a glyph is simply apicture that describes a character, or sometimes it may describe multiplecharacters. But a character could be a lowercase F or lowercase I. A glyph couldbe an F and I or a combination of an F and an I, what we call an FI Ligature.So I am going to come here to the bottom and you can see that I now have thisTypeface selected called Myriad Pro.

At the top I have a little pop-up menu.It says Show: Entire Font.I am going to click on this pop-up here, and I will see that there are manyfeatures that are available inside of this font.We have things called Alternates.Alternates would be different versions of that one glyph.We have things like Denominators, which might be used inside of fractions.We have things called Standard Ligatures, which are things like FIcombinations and FL combinations; and things like Numerator, again, also usedfor fractions or old-style figures.

Those are where the actual numbers kind of look like lowercase letters, and someof them actually drop below the baseline.However, I am going to come here to the pop-up menu at the bottom where it hasthe font and I am just going to choose Myriad, because in my computer I haveboth the Standard version and also the Pro version of this font.And if I go over here to the pop-up menu here, notice that all those additionalfeatures that were available for the Pro version are not available for thisStandard version of Myriad.Here's another way to look at it.I am actually going to choose another font here.

Let's choose something like Letter Gothic Std.I can actually make my Glyphs panel much bigger by kind of enlarging the panelright here, and if I scroll through the panel here, I can see the additionalglyphs that exist for this font.In fact, let me kind of zoom out just a little bit.I am going to click on these little smaller mountains here to zoom out andyou can actually see now the entire character set for this typeface, Letter Gothic Std.So you can see right away I have here all these numbers here.

I have some of these characters that you might be familiar with.I've uppercase and lowercase letters.I have some basic ligatures, like FI and FL, for example.And then I have some additional characters here at the bottom, but now I amgoing to choose a different typeface.Let's choose a Pro typeface.I am going to go to this little pop- up menu again, and I will scroll downover here to Myriad Pro.You can see instantly now that I have a lot more characters available.In fact, purely just for ligatures, instead of just FI and FL, which I see hereand here, I also have ligatures for FF, FFI, and FFJ, and FFL.

In fact, I am going to click on these little small mountains here to zoom outeven further and you can see that I have a lot more glyphs available to meinside of this font than I did in the other one.Again, this is a Pro Font, meaning it has extended characters inside of it.There are more features for me as a designer to tap into to use when I'm setting my type.Now there are some typefaces, for example, like Caflisch Script.Caflisch Script Pro is a handwritten typeface and there are tons of glyphsinside of that typeface.

There are also different variations.Let me zoom in just a little bit over here.Let me click on little big mountains over here, so I can zoom in closer to these.And you can see that the lowercase a has little black triangle that appears inthe lower right-hand corner.I will zoom in even little closer on this. And that means at there areadditional glyphs available for that character slot.So if I click and hold my mouse button down, you see that I have three differentglyph possibilities for a lowercase A. Now there are some foreign-language fontsthat can have up to 12 different variations of each individual character.

Now of course, you can use the Glyphs panel for typefaces that are not OpenType fonts.However, you won't get access to these extended features inside of them.Now, how would I use these features?Well, let's make my Glyphs panel a little bit smaller here.I am going to leave it set here to Myriad Pro.Let's kind of reduce the size over here. And now let's add some type into my document here.So I am going to type in, let's say the word, Hello, for example.Let me go ahead now and make this typeface bigger.I can actually go ahead and just hit Ctrl+A or Command+A, and thenCommand+Shift+Greater Than Sign on my keyboard, several times here to make this bigger on myscreen, so we can see it.

Another way to enlarge type sometimes is remember that in Illustrator,everything is always a graphic, so I can always just switch to my Selection tooland you can see I get the bounding box, here and I can just simply hold on theShift key and then just click and drag on this to actually make it much larger.But let's say I wanted to add one of these characters here.What I can do is I can actually double-click anywhere here.When you have a text object selected with your Selection tool, you could simplydouble-click anywhere inside that text object and Illustrator will give youthis blinking cursor, meaning that I am now inside of that text. And I can use,for example, my left or right arrow of my keyboard to move that cursor left and right.

I will bring it here to the beginning, and maybe I want to use the @ sign. MaybeI'm not familiar with where the @ sign is on my keyboard.Well, I can access it directly from Glyphs panel by simply coming over here andsaying, oh, here it is.I am going to go ahead now and I am going to double-click on it, and that'sgoing to automatically add it to wherever my cursor was.Now remember, if we see little black triangle, that means that there arealternate versions of that.If I go ahead and click and hold my mouse button down, I see there is a versionhere that's called Case Sensitive Forms and if I choose that, you see how it'skind of a little bit higher there on the baseline.

So that's how I might be able to access these additional glyphs.Now of course, we discussed before that OpenType fonts can have sometimesupwards of 60,000 glyph possibilities within that one font.I don't have 60,000 keys on my keyboard and I certainly don't want to memorizeevery possible different combination of how I might be able to access thesespecial kinds of characters.And that's why the Glyphs panel is valuable, because visually, I can scrollthrough and see all the different characters and glyphs available to me within asingle font. Simply double-click on them to add them into my document.

So that's how you use the Glyphs panel here inside of Illustrator to your benefit.I will tell you one thing though.If you think about it, what if I did have a font that had all of these differentglyph possibilities?I have to scroll through the entire glyphs panel just to find out what potentialcharacter might exist?Glad you asked that questionbecause we are going to cover that in the next movie.

There are currently no FAQs about Illustrator Insider Training: Type and Text.

Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

Already a member ?

Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
Learn more

Upgrade to our Annual Premium Membership today and get even more value from your lynda.com subscription:

“In a way, I feel like you are rooting for me. Like you are really invested in my experience, and want me to get as much out of these courses as possible this is the best place to start on your journey to learning new material.”— Nadine H.

Thanks for signing up.

We’ll send you a confirmation email shortly.

Sign up and receive emails about lynda.com and our online training library:

new course releases

newsletter

general communications

special notices

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.

Keep up with news, tips, and latest courses with emails from lynda.com.

Sign up and receive emails about lynda.com and our online training library:

new course releases

newsletter

general communications

special notices

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.